Ernie Kovacs Early life and career Where was Ernie Kovacs born? Kovacs's father Andrew emigrated from Hungary at age 13. What was interesting about Ernie's childhood? Though a poor student, Kovacs was influenced by his Trenton Central High School drama teacher, Harold Van Kirk, and received an acting scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts What did Kovacs do while at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts? When Kovacs began drama school, all he could afford was a fifth floor walk-up apartment on West 74th Street in New York City. Was he successful after graduation from the drama school? Kovacs used his class vacation time to pursue roles in summer stock companies. While working in Vermont during 1939, he became so seriously ill with pneumonia
What happened to Kovacs after he was ill?
What happened to Ernie Kovacs after being ill with pneumonia ?
Kovacs's father Andrew emigrated from Hungary at age 13. He worked as a policeman, restaurateur, and bootlegger; the last so successfully that he moved his wife Mary, and sons Tom and Ernie, into a 20-room mansion in the better part of Trenton.  Though a poor student, Kovacs was influenced by his Trenton Central High School drama teacher, Harold Van Kirk, and received an acting scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1937 with Van Kirk's help. The end of Prohibition and the Depression resulted in difficult financial times for the family. When Kovacs began drama school, all he could afford was a fifth floor walk-up apartment on West 74th Street in New York City. During this time, he watched many "Grade B" movies; admission was only ten cents. Many of these movies influenced his comedy routines later.  A 1938 local newspaper photograph shows Kovacs as a member of the Prospect Players, not yet wearing his trademark mustache. Like any aspiring actor, Kovacs used his class vacation time to pursue roles in summer stock companies. While working in Vermont during 1939, he became so seriously ill with pneumonia and pleurisy that his doctors didn't expect him to survive. During the next year and a half, his comedic talents developed as he entertained both doctors and patients with his antics during stays at several hospitals. While hospitalized, Kovacs developed a lifelong love of classical music by the gift of a radio, which he kept tuned to WQXR. By the time he was released, his parents had separated, and Kovacs went back to Trenton, living with his mother in a two-room apartment over a store. He began work as a cigar salesman, which resulted in a lifelong cigar-smoking habit.  Kovacs's first paid entertainment work was during 1941, as an announcer for Trenton's radio station WTTM. He spent the next nine years with WTTM, becoming the station's director of Special Events; in this job he did things like trying to see what it was like to be run over by a train (leaving the tracks at the last minute) and broadcasting from the cockpit of a plane for which he took flying lessons. Kovacs was also involved with local theater; a local newspaper published a photograph of him and the news that he was doing some directing for the Trenton Players Guild in early 1941. The Trentonian, a local weekly newspaper, offered Kovacs a column in June 1945; he named it "Kovacs Unlimited". CANNOTANSWER
During the next year and a half, his comedic talents developed as he entertained both doctors and patients with his antics during stays at several hospitals.
Ernest Edward Kovacs (January 23, 1919 – January 13, 1962) was an American comedian, actor, and writer.

Kovacs's visually experimental and often spontaneous comedic style influenced numerous television comedy programs for years after his death. Kovacs has been credited as an influence by many individuals and shows, including Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Saturday Night Live, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Jim Henson, Max Headroom, Chevy Chase, Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Captain Kangaroo, Sesame Street, The Electric Company, Pee-wee's Playhouse, The Muppet Show, Dave Garroway, Andy Kaufman, You Can't Do That on Television, MST3K, Uncle Floyd, among others. Chevy Chase thanked Kovacs during his acceptance speech for his Emmy award for Saturday Night Live.

While Kovacs and Adams received Emmy nominations for best performances in a comedy series during 1957, his talent was not recognized formally until after his death. The 1962 Emmy for Outstanding Electronic Camera Work and the Directors' Guild award came a short time after his fatal accident. A quarter century later, he was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. Kovacs also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in television. In 1986, the Museum of Broadcasting (later to become the Museum of Television & Radio and now the Paley Center for Media) presented an exhibit of Kovacs's work, called The Vision of Ernie Kovacs. The Pulitzer Prize–winning television critic, William Henry III, wrote for the museum's booklet: "Kovacs was more than another wide-eyed, self-ingratiating clown. He was television's first significant video artist."

Early life and career
Kovacs's father, Andrew John Kovacs, was born in 1890 and emigrated from Tornaújfalu, Hungary, which is now known as Turnianska Nová Ves, Slovakia. Andrew sailed on the S.S. Würzburg via Bremen, arriving at Ellis Island on February 8, 1906, at age 16. He worked as a policeman, restaurateur, and bootlegger, the last so successfully that he moved his wife Mary, son Tom, and his half-brother Ernest Edward Kovacs into a 20-room mansion in the better part of Trenton.

Though a poor student, Kovacs was influenced by his Trenton Central High School drama teacher, Harold Van Kirk, and received an acting scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1937 with Van Kirk's help. The end of Prohibition and the onset of the Great Depression resulted in difficult financial times for the family. When Kovacs began drama school, all he could afford was a fifth-floor walk-up apartment on West 74th Street in New York City.
During this time, he watched many "Grade B" movies; admission was only ten cents. Many of these movies influenced his comedy routines later.

A 1938 local newspaper photograph shows Kovacs as a member of the Prospect Players, not yet wearing his trademark mustache. Kovacs used his class vacation time to pursue roles in summer stock companies. While working in Vermont in 1939, he became so seriously ill with pneumonia and pleurisy that his doctors didn't expect him to survive. During the next year and a half, his comedic talents developed as he entertained both doctors and patients with his antics during stays at several hospitals. While hospitalized, Kovacs developed a lifelong love of classical music by the gift of a radio, which he kept tuned to WQXR. By the time he was released his parents had separated, and Kovacs went back to Trenton, living with his mother in a two-room apartment over a store. He began work as a cigar salesman, which resulted in a lifelong tobacco-smoking habit. 

Kovacs's first paid entertainment work was during 1941 as an announcer for Trenton's radio station WTTM. He spent the next nine years with WTTM, becoming the station's director of special events; in this job he did things like trying to see what it was like to be run over by a train (leaving the tracks at the last minute) and broadcasting from the cockpit of a plane for which he took flying lessons. Kovacs was also involved with local theater; a local newspaper published a photograph of him and the news that he was doing some directing for the Trenton Players Guild in early 1941. The Trentonian, a local weekly newspaper, offered Kovacs a column in June 1945; he named it "Kovacs Unlimited".

Start in television

Arriving at NBC's Philadelphia affiliate, WPTZ, for an audition wearing a barrel and shorts got Kovacs his first television job in January 1950. His first show was Pick Your Ideal, a fashion and promotional program for the Ideal Manufacturing Company. Before long, Kovacs was also the host of  Deadline For Dinner and Now You're Cooking, shows featuring advice from local chefs. When Kovacs's guest chef did not arrive in time for the show, he offered a recipe for "Eggs Scavok" (Kovacs spelled backward). Kovacs seasoned the egg dish with ashes from his cigar. The sponsor was a local propane company. Hosting these shows soon resulted in his becoming host of a program named Three to Get Ready, named for WPTZ's channel 3 spot on television dials.

Premiering in November 1950, Three to Get Ready was innovative because it was the first regularly scheduled early morning (7–9am) show in a major television market, predating NBC's Today by more than a year. Prior to this, it had been assumed that few people would watch television at such an early hour. While the show was advertised as early morning news and weather, Kovacs provided this and more in an original manner.  When rain was in the weather forecast, Kovacs would get on a ladder and pour water down on the staff member reading the report. Goats were auditioned for a local theater performance and tiny women appeared to walk up his arm. Kovacs also went outside of the studio for some of his skits, running through a downtown Philadelphia restaurant in a gorilla suit in one; in another, he looked into a construction pit, saying it was deep enough to see to China, when a man in Chinese clothing popped up, said a few words in the language, and ran off. Despite its popularity, the weekly prop budget for the show was just $15. Kovacs once asked his viewers to send unwanted items to Channel 3; they filled the station's lobby.

The only character no one ever saw inspired more gifts; he was Howard, the World's Strongest Ant. From the time of his WPTZ debut, Howard received more than 30,000 gifts from Kovacs's viewers, including a mink-lined swimming pool. Kovacs began his Early Eyeball Fraternal & Marching Society (EEFMS) while doing Three to Get Ready. There were membership cards with by-laws and ties; the password was a favorite phrase of Kovacs's: "It's Been Real". Kovacs continued the EEFMS on his morning show when he moved to WCBS in New York in 1952. The success of Three to Get Ready proved that people did indeed watch early-morning television, and it was one of the factors that caused NBC to create The Today Show. WPTZ did not begin broadcasting Today when it premiered on January 14, 1952; network influence caused the station to end Three to Get Ready at the end of March of that year.

During early 1952, Kovacs was also doing a late morning show for WPTZ named Kovacs on the Corner. Kovacs would walk through an imaginary neighborhood, talking with various characters such as Pete the Cop and Luigi the Barber. As with Three to Get Ready, there were some special segments. "Swap Time" was one of them: Viewers could bring their unwanted items to the WPTZ studios to trade them live on the air with Kovacs. The show made its debut on January 4, 1952, with Kovacs losing creative control of the program soon after it was begun. Kovacs on the Corner was short-lived; it ended on March 28, 1952, along with Three to Get Ready. Kovacs then began work for WCBS-TV in New York with a local morning show and a later network one. Both programs were canceled; Kovacs lost the local morning program for the same reason as Three to Get Ready—the broadcasting time was confiscated by the station's network in 1954.

Visual humor and characters

At WPTZ, Kovacs began using the ad-libbed and experimental style that would become his reputation, including video effects, superimpositions, reverse polarities and scanning, and quick blackouts. He was also noted for abstraction and carefully timed non-sequitur gags and for allowing the fourth wall to be breached. Kovacs's cameras commonly showed his viewers activity beyond the boundaries of the show set—including crew members and outside the studio itself. Kovacs also liked talking to the off-camera crew and even introduced segments from the studio control room. He frequently made use of accidents and happenstance, incorporating the unexpected into his shows. In one of Kovacs's Philadelphia broadcasts, Oscar Liebetrau, an elderly crew member who was known for often sleeping for the duration of the telecast, was introduced to the audience as "Sleeping Schwartz." Kovacs was once knocked unconscious when a pie smashed into his face still had the plate under it.

Kovacs's love of spontaneity extended to his crew, who would occasionally play on-air pranks on him to see how he would react. During one of his NBC shows, Kovacs was appearing as the inept magician Matzoh Heppelwhite. The sketch called for the magician to frequently hit a gong, which was the signal for a sexy female assistant to bring out a bottle and shot glass for a quick snort of alcohol. Stagehands substituted real liquor for the iced tea normally used for the skit. Kovacs realized that he would be called upon to drink a shot of liquor for each successive gong. He pressed on with the sketch and was quite inebriated by the end of the show.

Kovacs helped develop camera tricks still common decades after his death. His character Eugene sat at a table to eat his lunch, but as he removed items one at a time from a lunch box, he watched them inexplicably roll down the table into the lap of a man reading a newspaper at the other end. When Kovacs poured milk from a thermos bottle, the stream flowed in a seemingly unusual direction. Never seen on television before, the secret was using a tilted set in front of a camera tilted at the same angle.

He constantly sought new techniques and used both primitive and improvised ways of creating visual effects that would later be done electronically. One innovative construction involved attaching a kaleidoscope made from a toilet paper roll to a camera lens with cardboard and tape and setting the resulting abstract images to music. Another was a soup can with both ends removed fitted with angled mirrors. Used on a camera and turning it could put Kovacs seemingly on the ceiling. An underwater stunt involved cigar smoker Kovacs sitting in an easy chair, reading his newspaper and somehow smoking a cigar. Removing it from his mouth, Kovacs was able to exhale a puff of white smoke, all while floating underwater. The trick: the "smoke" was a small amount of milk which he filled his mouth with before submerging. Kovacs repeated the effect for a Dutch Masters television commercial on his ABC game show, Take A Good Look.

One of the special effects he employed made it appear as if he was able to look through his assistant, Barbara Loden's, head.  The illusion was performed by placing a black patch on Loden's head and standing her against a black background while one studio camera was trained on her. A second one photographed Kovacs, who used the studio monitor to position himself exactly so that his eye would appear to be looking through a hole in her head.

He also developed such routines as an all-gorilla version of Swan Lake, a poker game set to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the skit Silent Show, in which Eugene interacts with the world accompanied solely by music and sound effects, parodies of typical television commercials and movie genres, and various musical segments with everyday items (such as kitchen appliances or office equipment) moving in sync to music. A popular recurring skit was The Nairobi Trio, three derby-hatted apes miming mechanically and rhythmically to the tune of Robert Maxwell's "Solfeggio".

Kovacs used extended sketches and mood pieces or quick blackout gags lasting only seconds. Some could be expensive, such as his famous used-car salesman routine with a jalopy and a breakaway floor: it cost $12,000 to produce the six-second gag. He was one of the first television comedians to use odd fake credits and comments between the legitimate credits and, at times, during his routines.

Kovacs reportedly disliked working in front of a live audience, as was the case with the shows he did for NBC during the 1950s. He found the presence of an audience distracting, and those in the seats frequently did not understand some of the more elaborate visual gags and special effects, which could only be appreciated by watching studio monitors instead of the stage.

Like many comedians of the era, Kovacs created a rotation of recurring roles. In addition to the silent "Eugene," his most familiar characters were the fey, lisping poet Percy Dovetonsils, and the heavily accented German radio announcer, Wolfgang von Sauerbraten. Mr. Question Man, who answered viewer queries, was a satire on the long-run (1937–56) radio series, The Answer Man. Others included horror show host Auntie Gruesome, bumbling magician Matzoh Heppelwhite, Frenchman Pierre Ragout and Miklos Molnar, the sardonic Hungarian host of a cooking show. The Miklos character wasn't always confined to a kitchen; Kovacs performed a parody of The Howdy Doody Show with "Buffalo Miklos" as the host. Poet Percy Dovetonsils can be found playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on a disappearing piano and as a "Master Detective" on the "Private Eye-Private Eye" presentation of the US Steel Hour on CBS March 8, 1961. On the same show, the Nairobi Trio abandons its instruments for a safe-cracking job; still with a background of "Solfeggio", but speaking, two of the three appear in an "Outer Space" sketch. 
Kovacs became a regular on NBC Radio's program Monitor beginning during late 1958, often using his Mr. Question Man character in his radio monologues.

Kovacs never hesitated to lampoon those considered institutions of radio and television. In April 1954, he started the late-night talk show, The Ernie Kovacs Show, on DuMont Television Network's New York flagship station, WABD. Stage, screen and radio notables were often guests. Archie Bleyer, head of Cadence Records, came to chat one evening.  Bleyer had been the long-time orchestra director for Arthur Godfrey's radio and television shows.  He had been dismissed by Godfrey the year before, together with fellow cast member, singer Julius La Rosa.  In La Rosa's case, he hired a manager, defying an unwritten Godfrey policy. With Bleyer, Godfrey was angered when he found that Bleyer's record company Cadence Records had produced spoken-word material by Don McNeill, host of ABC's Don McNeill's Breakfast Club, which Godfrey considered competition to his show. Bleyer and Kovacs were shown in split screen, with Kovacs wearing a red wig, headphones, and playing a ukulele in a Godfrey imitation, while talking with his guest.

Kovacs's television programs included Three to Get Ready (an early morning program seen on Philadelphia's WPTZ from 1950 through 1952), It's Time for Ernie (1951, his first network series), Ernie in Kovacsland, (a summer replacement show for Kukla, Fran and Ollie, 1951), The Ernie Kovacs Show (1952–56 on various networks), a twice-a-week job filling in for Steve Allen as host of The Tonight Show on Mondays and Tuesdays (1956–57), and game shows Gamble on Love, One Minute Please, Time Will Tell (all on DuMont), and Take a Good Look (1959–61). Kovacs was also the host of a program, Silents Please, which showed silent movies on network television, with serious discussion about the movies and their actors.

Kovacs had a brief stint as a celebrity panelist for the television series What's My Line?, but took his responsibilities less than seriously, often eschewing a legitimate question for the sake of a laugh. An example: Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, the founder of an automobile company, was the program's "mystery guest." Previous questioning had established that the mystery guest's name was synonymous with an automobile brand, Kovacs asked, "Are you – and this is just a wild guess – but are you Abraham Lincoln?"—a reference to the Ford Motor Company's Lincoln automobiles. When Kovacs gave an interview admitting that he was absent from the show when he wanted to go out for dinner on a Sunday, his stint on the panel show was ended.

TV specials

He also did several television specials, including the famous Silent Show (1957), featuring his character, Eugene: the first all-pantomime prime-time network program. After the end of the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis partnership, NBC offered Lewis the opportunity to host his own 90-minute color television special. Lewis opted to use only 60 minutes, leaving the network 30 minutes to fill; no one wanted this time slot, but Kovacs was willing to have it. The program contained no spoken dialogue and contained only sound effects and music. Featuring Kovacs as the mute, Charlie Chaplin-like character "Eugene", the program contained surreal sight gags. Kovacs developed the Eugene character during the autumn of 1956, when hosting the television series The Tonight Show. Expectations were high for the Lewis program, but it was Kovacs' special that received the most attention; Kovacs received his first movie offer, had a cover story in Life magazine, and received the Sylvania Award that year. 
In 1961, Kovacs and his co-director, Joe Behar, were recipients of the Directors Guild of America Award for a second version of this program broadcast by the American Broadcasting Company network.

A series of monthly half-hour specials for ABC during 1961–62 is often considered his best television work. Produced on videotape using new editing and special effects techniques, it won a 1962 Emmy Award. Kovacs and co-director Behar also won the Directors Guild of America award for an Ernie Kovacs Special based on the earlier, silent "Eugene" program. Kovacs' last ABC special was broadcast posthumously, on January 23, 1962.

The Dutch Masters cigar company became well-known during the late 1950s and early 1960s for its sponsorship of various television projects of Ernie Kovacs. The company allowed Kovacs total creative control in the creation of their television commercials for his programs and specials.  He produced a series of non-speaking television commercials for Dutch Masters during the run of his television series Take A Good Look which was praised by both television critics and viewers.

While praised by critics,  Kovacs rarely had a highly-rated show. The Museum of Broadcast Communications says, "It is doubtful that Ernie Kovacs would find a place on television today. He was too zany, too unrestrained, too undisciplined. Perhaps Jack Gould of The New York Times said it best for Ernie Kovacs: 'The fun was in trying'."

Other shows had greater success while using elements of Kovacs's style. George Schlatter, producer of the later television series Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, was married to actress Jolene Brand, who had appeared in Kovacs' comic troupes over the years and had been a frequent participant in his pioneering sketches. Laugh-In made frequent use of the quick blackout gags and surreal humor that marked many Kovacs projects. Another link was a young NBC staffer, Bill Wendell, Kovacs's usual announcer and sometimes a sketch participant. From 1980 to 1995, Wendell was the announcer for David Letterman, whose show and style of humor were greatly influenced by Kovacs.

The Music Man
Kovacs was also known for his eclectic musical taste. His main theme song was named "Oriental Blues" by Jack Newton. The rendition most often heard was a piano-driven trio version, but, for his primetime show during 1956, music director Harry Sosnik presented a full-blown big-band version. The German song "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" from The Threepenny Opera (anglicized to "Mack the Knife"), frequently underscored his blackout routines. Songwriter Robert Maxwell's "Solfeggio" became associated with the derby-hatted apes, 'The Nairobi Trio'.

In the 1982 TV special Ernie Kovacs: Television's Original Genius, Edie Adams recalled that when Kovacs first heard the melody, he immediately knew what he wanted to do with it, creating a music-box-like trio that moved in time to the tune. Kovacs was introduced to the song in 1954 by Barry Shear, his director at DuMont Television Network.

Kovacs matched an unusual treatment of "Sentimental Journey", by Mexican bandleader Juan García Esquivel, to video of an empty office in which various items (pencil sharpeners, water coolers, wall clocks) come to life in rhythm with the music; it was a variation on several famous animations of a decade earlier. The original three-minute presentation was outlined by Kovacs in a four-page, single-spaced memo to his staff. The perfectionist Kovacs describes in minute detail what had to be done and how to do it. The memo ends with this: "I don't know how the hell you're going to get this done by Sunday – but 'rots of ruck." (signed) "Ernie (with love)". Kovacs also made careful use of the shrill singer Leona Anderson—who had somewhat less than a classical (or even listenable) voice, by some estimations—in comic vignettes.

Kovacs used classical music as background for silent skits or abstract visual routines, including "Concerto for Orchestra", by Béla Bartók; music from the opera "The Love of Three Oranges", by Sergei Prokofiev; the finale of Igor Stravinsky's suite "The Firebird"; and Richard Strauss' "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks"; and, from George Gershwin, "Rialto Ripples"--the theme to his shows--as well as parts of Gershwin's "Concerto in F". He may have been known best for using Joseph Haydn's "String Quartet, Opus 3, Number 5" (the "Serenade," actually composed by Roman Hoffstetter) for a series of 1960–61 commercials he created and videotaped for his sponsor, Dutch Masters.

For the show of May 22, 1959, Kovacs on Music, Kovacs began by saying, "I have never really understood classical music, so I would like to take this opportunity to explain it to others." He presented a gorilla version of Swan Lake which differed from the usual performance only in the persona of the dancers, along with giant paper clips moving to music and other sketches.

He also served as host on a jazz album to benefit the American Cancer Society in 1957, Listening to Jazz with Ernie Kovacs. It was a 15-minute recording featuring some of the celebrities of the art, including pianist Jimmy Yancey and old original New Orleans Jazz Trumpeter Bunk Johnson, soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, guitarist Django Reinhardt, composer/pianist/bandleader Duke Ellington and longtime Ellington trumpeter Cootie Williams. Both the Library of Congress and the National Library of Canada have copies of this recording in their collections.

In print
Kovacs wrote a novel, Zoomar: A Sophisticated Novel about Love and TV (Doubleday, 1957), based on television pioneer Pat Weaver; it took Kovacs only 13 days to write. The book took its title from the Zoomar brand zoom lenses frequently used on television cameras at the time. In a 1960 interview, Edie Adams related that the novel was written after Kovacs' experiences with network television while he was preparing to broadcast the Silent Show. The 1961 British edition was retitled T.V. Medium Rare by its London-based publisher, Transworld.

While he worked on several other book projects, Kovacs's only other published title was How to Talk at Gin, published posthumously in 1962. He intended part of the book's proceeds to benefit Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. During 1955–58, he wrote for Mad (his favorite humor magazine), including the feature "Strangely Believe It!" (a parody of Ripley's Believe It or Not! that was a regular feature of his television shows) and Gringo, a board game with ridiculously complicated rules that was renamed Droongo for the television show. Kovacs also wrote the introduction to the 1958 collection Mad For Keeps: A Collection of the Best from Mad Magazine.

Television guest star

Kovacs and Edie Adams guest starred on what turned out to be the final episode of The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show, (syndicated as The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour or We Love Lucy) "Lucy Meets the Moustache", which was in rehearsals during the week of February 28 and filmed on March 3 for an April 1, 1960 network broadcast. "Lucy Meets the Moustache" was the last time Arnaz and Ball worked together and the last time their famous characters appeared in a first-run broadcast.  According to Adams, Ball and Arnaz 'avoided contact and barely talked to each other in rehearsals and in-between scenes'.  Adams also said that they were not told their episode was the last or that the famous couple was to divorce (Ball entered the uncontested divorce request March 4, 1960).

Kovacs also appeared in roles on other television programs. For General Electric Theater's "I Was a Bloodhound" in 1959, Kovacs played the role of detective Barney Colby, whose extraordinary sense of smell helped him solve many seemingly-impossible cases. Colby was hired by a foreign country to recover its symbol of royalty, a baby elephant, who was being held for ransom.

Films
Kovacs found Hollywood success as a character actor, often typecast as a swarthy military officer (almost always a "Captain" of some sort) in such films as Operation Mad Ball, Wake Me When It's Over and Our Man in Havana. While working in his first film role for Operation Mad Ball, Kovacs was filming a wild party scene after midnight; it was decided to use real champagne for realism.  After a few hours of work, someone came up to Kovacs and remarked that he had been having quite a good time chasing starlets all night. Kovacs told the stranger to go to hell, since he was following the script; he later learned the stranger was Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures.  Kovacs and Cohn later became friends despite the way they had met, with Cohn giving Kovacs roles in Bell, Book and Candle (1958) and It Happened to Jane (1959).

He garnered critical acclaim for film roles such as the perennially-inebriated writer in Bell, Book and Candle and as the cartoonishly-evil head of a railroad company (who resembled Orson Welles' title character in Citizen Kane) in It Happened to Jane, where he had his head shaved and his remaining hair dyed grey for the role. In 1960, he played the base commander Charlie Stark in the comedy Wake Me When It's Over and the con man Frankie Cannon trying to steal John Wayne's gold mine in the western comedy, North to Alaska. His own personal favorite was said to have been the offbeat Five Golden Hours (1961), in which he portrayed a larcenous professional mourner who meets his match in a professional widow played by Cyd Charisse. Kovacs's last movie, Sail a Crooked Ship (also 1961), was released one month before his death.

Personal life

First marriage
Kovacs and his first wife, Bette Wilcox, were married on August 13, 1945. When the marriage ended, he fought for custody of their children, Elizabeth ("Bette") and Kip Raleigh ("Kippie"). The court awarded Kovacs full custody upon determining that his former wife was mentally unstable. The decision was extremely unusual at the time, setting a legal precedent. Wilcox subsequently kidnapped the children, taking them to Florida. After a long and expensive search, Kovacs regained custody. These events were portrayed in the television movie Ernie Kovacs: Between the Laughter (1984), which garnered an Emmy Award nomination for its writer, April Smith. Kovacs was portrayed by Jeff Goldblum.

Kovacs's first wife made a legal attempt to gain custody of her two daughters soon after his death. She began August 2, 1962, by claiming $500,000 was her share of Kovacs's estate and charging that her ex-husband had abducted the girls in 1955; Kovacs had been granted legal custody of his daughters in 1952. On August 30, Wilcox filed an affidavit claiming that Kovacs's widow, Edie Adams, the stepmother to the girls, was "unfit" to care for them. Both daughters, Bette and Kippie, testified that they wanted to stay with their stepmother, Edie. Kippie's testimony was very emotional; in it she referred to Edie as "Mommy" and her birth mother as "the other lady." Upon hearing the verdict that the girls would remain in their home, Adams wept, saying, "This is what Ernie would have wanted. Now I can smile." Elizabeth Kovacs's reaction was "I'm so happy I can hardly express myself", after learning she and her sister would not be forced to leave Edie.

Second marriage

Kovacs and Adams met in 1951 when she was hired to work for his WPTZ show, Three to Get Ready. Her appearance on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts caught the eye of Kovacs's producer, and he asked her to audition for the program.  A classically-trained singer, she was able to perform only three popular songs. Edie said later, "I sang them all during the audition, and if they had asked to hear another, I never would have made it." Quoting Kovacs, "I wish I could say I was the big shot that hired her, but it was my show in name only – the producer had all the say. Later on I did have something to say and I said it: 'Let's get married.'"

After the couple's first date, Kovacs proceeded to buy a Jaguar car, telling Adams he wanted to take her out in style. He was seriously taken with the beautiful and talented young woman, courting her with imagination and flair. Kovacs's attempts to win Adams' affection included hiring a mariachi band to serenade her backstage at the Broadway musical she was performing in and the sudden gift of a diamond engagement ring, telling her to wear it until she made up her mind. Kovacs continued this romantic quest after the show went out of town.

Adams booked a six-week European cruise, which she hoped would let her make up her mind whether or not to marry Kovacs.  After only three days away and many long-distance telephone calls, she curtailed her trip and returned to say "yes". They eloped and were married on September 12, 1954, in Mexico City. The ceremony was presided over by former New York City mayor William O'Dwyer and was performed in Spanish, which neither Kovacs nor Adams understood; O'Dwyer had to prompt each of them to say "Sí" at the "I do" portion of the vows. Adams, who had a middle-class upbringing, was smitten by Kovacs's quirky ways; the couple remained together until his death. (She later said about Kovacs, "He treated me like a little girl, and I loved it—Women's Lib be damned!")

Adams also aided Kovacs's struggle to reclaim his two older children after the kidnapping by their mother. She also was a regular partner on his television shows. Kovacs usually introduced or addressed her in a businesslike way, as "Edith Adams". Adams was usually willing to do anything he envisioned, whether it was singing seriously, performing impersonations (including a well-regarded impression of Marilyn Monroe) or taking a pie in the face or a pratfall if and when needed. The couple had one daughter, Mia Susan Kovacs, born June 20, 1959.

Kovacs and his family shared a 16-room apartment in Manhattan on Central Park West that seemed perfect until he went to California for his first film role in Operation Mad Ball. The experience of the totally different, laid-back lifestyle of Hollywood made a big impression on him. He realized he was working too much in New York; in California he would be able to work fewer hours, do just as well or better and have more time for Edie and his daughters. At the time, he was working most of the time and sleeping about two or three hours a night. Kovacs claimed that he realized it was time for a change when he was telling his girls a bedtime story and found himself thinking of using it for a show instead. Kovacs relocated his family there in 1957, after Edie finished work for the Broadway play Li'l Abner.

Death

In the early morning hours of January 13, 1962, Kovacs lost control of his Chevrolet Corvair station wagon while turning quickly and crashed into a power pole in Beverly Hills. He was thrown halfway out the vehicle's passenger side and died almost instantly from chest and head injuries.
A photographer arrived soon after and images of Kovacs' bodywith an unlit cigar on the pavement near his outstretched handappeared in newspapers across the United States.

In keeping Kovacs's wishes, a simple service was held at the Beverly Hills Community Presbyterian Church. The pallbearers included Jack Lemmon, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Billy Wilder, and Mervyn LeRoy, and George Burns, Groucho Marx, Edward G. Robinson, Kirk Douglas, Jack Benny, James Stewart, Charlton Heston, Buster Keaton and Milton Berle also attended. The pastor said that Kovacs had summed up his life thus: "I was born in Trenton, New Jersey in 1919 to a Hungarian couple. I've been smoking cigars ever since."
He is buried in Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles. His epitaph reads "Nothing in moderation—We all loved him."

Tax evasion
A frequent critic of the U.S. tax system, Kovacs owed the Internal Revenue Service several hundred thousand dollars in back taxes, due to his refusal to pay the bulk of them. Up to 90% of his earnings were garnished as a result. His long battles with the IRS inspired Kovacs to invest his money in a convoluted series of paper corporations in the U.S. and Canada. He would give them bizarre names, such as "The Bazooka Dooka Hicka Hocka Hookah Company". In 1961, Kovacs was served with a $75,000 lien for back taxes; that same day he bought the California Racquet Club with the apparent hope of being able to use it as a tax write-off. The property had mortgages at the time of purchase which were later paid by Edie Adams.

His tax woes also affected Kovacs's career, forcing him to take any offered work to pay his debt. This included the ABC game show Take a Good Look, appearances on variety shows such as NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford, and some of his less-memorable film roles. He also filmed an unaired 1962 pilot episode for a proposed CBS series, Medicine Man (co-starring Buster Keaton; the pilot episode titled "A Pony for Chris"). Kovacs' role was that of Dr. P. Crookshank, a traveling medicine salesman in the 1870s, who was selling Mother McGreevy's Wizard Juice, also known as "man's best friend in a bottle". This was abandoned after his death, which occurred the day after filming some scenes for the pilot in Griffith Park. CBS initially intended to broadcast the show as part of a summer replacement program, The Comedy Spot, but decided against it due to problems with Kovacs' estate. The pilot is part of the public collection of the Paley Center for Media.

Some of the issues regarding Kovacs' tax problems were still unresolved years after his death. Kovacs had purchased two insurance policies in 1951; his mother was named as the primary beneficiary of them. The IRS placed a lien against them both for their cash value in 1961. To stop the actions being taken against her, Mary Kovacs had to go to Federal court. The court's early 1966 ruling resolved the issue, with the last sentence of the document reading: "Prima facie, it looks as if, within the limits of discretion permitted the government by the relevant statutes, an injustice is being done Mary Kovacs."

Adams, who married and divorced twice after Kovacs' death, refused help from celebrity friends who planned a benefit for the purpose. "I can take care of my own children," she said, and resolved to accept offers only from those who wanted to hire her for her talents. Adams eventually paid all of Kovacs's debts.

Lost and surviving work
Most of Kovacs's early television work was performed live: few kinescopes have survived. Some videotapes of his ABC specials were preserved; others, such as his quirky game show, Take a Good Look, were available mostly in short segments until recently, with the release of some complete, videotaped episodes. After Kovacs's death, Adams discovered not only that her husband owed ABC a great deal of money, but that some networks were systematically erasing and reusing tapes of Kovacs's shows or disposing of the kinescopes and videotapes. She succeeded in purchasing the rights to surviving footage with the proceeds from Kovacs' insurance policy and her own earnings after Kovacs' IRS debts were paid. In March 1996, Adams detailed her experiences before the National Film Preservation Board.

Adams first used some of the videotapes she had purchased for a 1968 ABC television special, The Comedy of Ernie Kovacs; to produce the show, she hired Kovacs's former producer and editor. The hour-long program was sponsored by Kovacs's former sponsor, Dutch Masters.

Most of Kovacs's salvaged work is available to researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles Library's Department of Special Collections: additional material is available at the Paley Center for Media.

The 1984 television film Ernie Kovacs: Between the Laughter helped return Kovacs to the public's attention, though the show emphasized his bid to retrieve his kidnapped children instead of his professional life. Jeff Goldblum portrayed Kovacs, Madolyn Smith portrayed Bette and Melody Anderson portrayed Adams in the movie.  Edie Adams appeared in a cameo in this film, playing Mae West; it was one of the impressions she performed in shows with Kovacs. Telecasts of edited compilations of some of his work by PBS (station WTTW, Chicago) under the title The Best of Ernie Kovacs in 1977, inspired the film. These broadcasts were made available on VHS and DVD. The DVD set features extras that are not in the VHS set. The series was narrated by Jack Lemmon.

During the early 1990s, The Comedy Channel broadcast a series of Kovacs' shows under the generic title of The Ernie Kovacs Show. The series included both the ABC specials and some of his 1950s shows from NBC. By 2008, there were no broadcast, cable, or satellite channels broadcasting any of Kovacs's television work, other than his panel appearances on What's My Line? on the Game Show Network. 

On April 19, 2011, Shout! Factory released The Ernie Kovacs Collection, six DVDs spanning Kovacs's television career. The company's website also offers an extra disc with material from Tonight! and The Ernie Kovacs Show, as well as a rare color kinescope of the complete 30-minute 1957 NBC color broadcast featuring "Eugene". On October 23, 2012, Shout! Factory released The Ernie Kovacs Collection: Volume 2 on DVD.

In 1961, Kovacs recorded a record album of poetry in the character of Percy Dovetonsils named Percy Dovetonsils Thpeakth, but was unable to release it due to contractual obligations with other record companies. After he was given the masters, Kovacs donated them to a Los Angeles area hospital. Adams was able to re-acquire the tapes in 1967, and they remained part of her private collection until her death in 2008. The tapes were labeled as movie material and were thought to be such until further examination proved they were Kovacs as Percy reading his poems with no music background. The album was finally released in 2012.

Kovacs was inducted posthumously into the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia's Hall of Fame in 1992.

Partial filmography
 Operation Mad Ball (1957) (with Jack Lemmon) as Capt. Paul Lock
 Bell, Book and Candle (1958) (with James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Jack Lemmon as Sidney Redlitch
 It Happened to Jane (1959) (with Doris Day and Jack Lemmon) as Harry Foster Malone
 Our Man in Havana (1959) (with Alec Guinness and Noël Coward) as Capt. Segura
 Wake Me When It's Over (1960) (with Dick Shawn) as Capt. Charlie Stark
 Strangers When We Meet (1960) (with Kirk Douglas and Kim Novak) as Roger Altar
 North to Alaska (1960) (with John Wayne) as Frankie Canon
 Pepe (1960) (with Cantinflas) as Immigration Inspector
 Five Golden Hours (1961) (with Cyd Charisse and George Sanders) as Aldo Bondi
 Sail a Crooked Ship (1961, with Robert Wagner) as Bugsy G. Foglemeyer aka The Captain

Notes

References

Bibliography

 via Project MUSE

Further reading
 Adams, Edie (1990). Sing a Pretty Song: The "Offbeat" Life of Edie Adams, Including the Ernie Kovacs Years. William Morrow; 
 Barker, David Brian (1982). "Every Moment's a Gift": Ernie Kovacs in Hollywood, 1957–1962, a Master's Thesis. Available for viewing at the library at the University of Texas at Austin 
 Rico, Diana (1990). Kovacsland: A Biography of Ernie Kovacs.  Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich; 
 Walley, David (1975). Nothing in Moderation. Drake Publishers; Reprinted as The Ernie Kovacs Phile by David Walley, Bolder Books, 1978 and Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 1987;

External links

 The Official Ernie Kovacs Website
 
 Ernie Kovacs Dot Net: A Tribute To Television's Original Genius
 
 Kovacsland Online! – the Ernie Kovacs website
 List of Kovacs' 16 articles for MAD magazine

Watch
 The Jack Benny Program with Ernie Kovacs as guest at the Internet Archive
 Operation Mad Ball Trailer (1957) at the Internet Archive
 John Barbour's documentary Ernie Kovacs: Television's Original Genius at John Barbour's World
 Ernie Kovacs Dutch Masters Cigar Commercial

1919 births
1962 deaths
20th-century American male actors
American people of Hungarian descent
American comedy writers
American game show hosts
American male film actors
American male television actors
American humorists
American satirists
American comics writers
American television talk show hosts
Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)
Emmy Award winners
Mad (magazine) people
Male actors from New Jersey
Actors from Trenton, New Jersey
Road incident deaths in California
Trenton Central High School alumni
Writers from Trenton, New Jersey
American male comedy actors
20th-century American comedians
Frank Kovacs (December 4, 1919 – February 1990) was an American amateur and professional tennis player in the mid-20th century. He won the U.S. National Indoor Tennis Championships singles title in 1941. He won the World Professional Championships tournament in 1945 in San Francisco. Kovacs was successful on clay and won the Great Lakes Professional Clay Court Championships near Chicago in 1946, defeating Riggs in the final, and five U.S. Professional Clay Court Championships from 1948 to 1953. Kovacs won the International Professional Championships or U.S. Professional Championships at Cleveland in 1951. He also won the U.S. Professional Challenge Tour in 1947 against Bobby Riggs. 

Kovacs was ranked the world No. 1 professional tennis player in two different years, by the WPTA (World Professional Tennis Association) for 1945 and by the PTPA (Professional Tennis Players Association) for 1951.

Biography
Kovacs' father was a Hungarian immigrant upholsterer. In his youth he had tennis lessons at the Berkeley Tennis Club. Kovacs had a reputation as an eccentric tennis player and showman on the court. Once, serving for a match point, he tossed three balls in the air - hitting the middle one for an ace. He was known to jump into the stands to applaud his opponents, and once staged a sit-down strike during a match. A newspaper article in 1940 said "Kovacs' comments as he races about the court are remindful of Bob Hope or Milton Berle before a microphone, and that these ad libs are spoken in a voice that overcomes the poor acoustics of a tennis court and are audible to everyone in the gallery." Jack Kramer writes in his autobiography that Kovacs "was a big attractive guy, with a great smile—sort of a Nastase type, only harmless, not mean."  He goes on to say that during an important match against Joe Hunt "Kovacs looked up at an airplane. Hunt mimicked him, so Kovacs lay down for a clearer view, and Hunt did the same, and they were both soon lying flat out on the turf watching an airplane fly by while the fans watched them."

Career

Amateur
1936
In July Kovacs reached the quarter finals of the Oregon championships in Portland before losing to Elwood Cooke. Later in the month he lost in the quarter finals of the Washington State championships in Seattle to Dick Bennett.

1937
In May Kovacs won the Central California championships beating Ed Amark in the final. In June Kovacs was beaten in the final of the California State Championship tournament at Berkeley. Dick Bennett of the University of California tennis team defeated him in five sets. John Murio, former California state champion, said Kovacs was better at 17 years of age than Don Budge. Murio opposed Budge, when Budge was 17, in various tournaments around California. In July Kovacs beat Walter Senior to win the Ohio championships. In July, Kovacs won the Badger State Championships beating Donald Leavens in the final. In August, Kovacs won the Port Stockton tournament beating Ed Amark in the final.

1938
In May Kovacs beat 16 year old Jack Kramer in the final to win the California State championship.
In very hot conditions in the third round at the Newport Casino event in August, Kovacs faced William Murphy. Murphy won the first set and then led 3-1 lead in the second. In the fourth game, Kovacs slumped to the ground and had to be assisted to the dressing room. He lost in the third round of the 1938 U. S. National championships to Gene Mako.

1939
Kovacs beat Eddie Alloo in the final of the Northern California indoor tournament in San Francisco in February. Kovacs beat Alloo in the final to win the California State championships in May. In June, Kovacs beat Tom Brown and Nick Carter to win the Central California championships. Kovacs lost to reigning Wimbledon and U. S. champion Bobby Riggs in the final of the Pacific Coast championships in October in five sets, despite leading 5-2 in the fifth set.

1940
In May, Kovacs beat Welby Van Horn to win the California State Championships for the third year in a row. In June Kovacs beat Frank Parker in straight sets in the final of the Triple A tournament in St. Louis. In July, Kovacs beat Elwood Cooke in five sets in the final to win Nassau Country Club Invitation Tournament in New York. In July, Kovacs beat Seymour Greenberg to win Eastern Slopes Gold Racquet tournament in New Hampshire. In August he beat Bobby Riggs in the semi finals at Southampton before losing to Don McNeill in the final. Kovacs beat young Vic Seixas from two sets to love down in the third round of the U. S. Nationals.  He lost in the quarter finals in straight sets to Joe Hunt. In October Kovacs lost in the final of the Pacific Coast championships to Riggs. In December, Kovacs beat Bobby Riggs in the final of the Oklahoma indoor tournament. Kovacs was the No. 3 ranked American amateur in 1940.

1941
In January Kovacs beat Eddie Alloo in the final of the Dixie tournament in Tampa. In January, Kovacs beat Riggs in the quarter finals of the Florida state tournament in Orlando and went on to beat Jack Kramer in the semis and Don McNeill in the final. In January, Kovacs beat Riggs in four sets to win the title at St. Petersburg, Florida. In February, Kovacs beat Riggs in the final of the University of Miami event from two sets to love down. Kovacs won the title at the U.S. National Indoor Tennis Championships in March, which was held at the Oklahoma Coliseum, after three-straight-set wins in the semifinal against Riggs and in the final against Wayne Sabin.
In April, Kovacs won the River Oaks tournament in Houston beating Kramer in the semi finals and Bitsy Grant in the final. In June, Kovacs won at Orange Lawn Tennis Club, N.J. on grass, defeating Kramer in the final. In August, Kovacs won the Eastern Grasscourt Championships at the Westchester Country Club in Rye, N.Y., defeating Schroeder, McNeill, and Sabin in three-straight-set matches. Kovacs was runner-up in the U.S. National Championships at Forest Hills, beating Jack Kramer and Don McNeill before losing to top-seeded Bobby Riggs in a four-sets final. Kovacs beat Riggs in the final of the Pacific Coast championships in October, allowing Riggs just five games in three sets. 
"I've never seen Frank play better tennis. He played brilliantly and outplayed me all the way. I have never taken a worse beating" said Riggs after the match. Kovacs won nine tournaments in 1941, defeating Riggs in five of those events. After the Pacific Coast final the Oakland Tribune reported that "it was their nineteenth encounter and Kovacs' seventh victory". Kovacs was ranked the No. 2 American amateur in 1941. 

Kovacs was also responsible for something of a scandal over money in tennis, which before the Open era was strictly divided into amateurs and professionals. After he was barred from amateur tennis in 1941 (leaving with a characteristic witticism - "Amateur tennis stinks - there's no money in it any more."), he talked about how money was quietly - and widely - paid to supposedly amateur players for entering tournaments.

Professional
After being evicted from the amateur ranks, Kovacs and Riggs turned professional at the same time, both signing a professional contract in November 1941 for $25,000 guarantees.

1942
From December 1941 through April 1942 the Pro tour consisted of round-robin matches between Don Budge, Bobby Riggs, Fred Perry, and Kovacs (with Gene Mako, Lester Stoefen and even Bill Tilden, for one match, as replacements for the injured Kovacs and Perry).  Budge ended up with the best record, 52 wins to 18 losses, ahead of Riggs 36-36 and Kovacs, 25 wins to 26 losses. Kovacs led the early part of the tour mainly because he defeated Budge in their first five matches.  Kovacs missed one month of play on this tour due to an arm injury. He was ranked the world No. 3 for 1941 by Ray Bowers. After the tour he entered the U.S. Pro Championships at Forest Hills and reached the semifinals, losing to Riggs. As with the other great pros of the time, he then joined the U.S. Army.  From 1943 to the end of WWII, Kovacs served in the army.

1943-1945
Though the tennis activity was very limited between 1943 and 1945 Kovacs defeated the players he was able to play against such as Welby Van Horn, Don McNeill, Adrian Quist, Bill Tilden, Jack Crawford, Jack Jossi, Martin Buxby, Joe Whalen, George Lott, George Lyttleton Rogers. Kovacs played matches in Australia in 1943 against Australian amateurs. At Brisbane on 28 and 29 August, Kovacs played Crawford. Kovacs won in straight sets on 28th, but lost in three sets on 29th. On 26 November at Brisbane, Kovacs beat Crawford for the loss of two games. The following day, Kovacs beat Crawford in straight sets. He beat Quist on 4 September in Sydney. In March, 1945 Kovacs won the World Professional Championships tournament in San Francisco organized by the WPTA (World Professional Tennis Association), defeating Van Horn in the final. Kovacs was ranked the world No. 1 professional tennis player for 1945 by the WPTA , ahead of 2) Van Horn 3) Budge 5) Riggs. Budge was reported to be out of condition due to military duties. Tilden ranked Kovacs as No. 2 behind Budge. YANK, The Army Weekly, stated that of the professional tennis players serving in uniform, "the best of them was Frank Kovacs". Kovacs was recalled to military duty in July and was reported to be in hospital in August, thus missing the USPLTA U.S. Pro won by Van Horn over a depleted field.

1946
In the 1946 world professional tournament series organized by the Professional Players Association,  Kovacs won the California State Pro Championship at Beverly Hills at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on cement (defeating Perry in the final), the Southwestern Pro at Phoenix indoor (defeating Earn in the final), the Southern California Pro at Santa Barbara on cement (defeating Perry in the final), the Texas State Pro at Dallas on grass (defeating Van Horn in the final in five sets). Kovacs displayed his skill on clay, winning the Cotton State Pro in Birmingham Ala. on clay (defeating Earn in the final), the Michigan State Pro at Kalamazoo on clay (defeating Riggs in the final), and the Great Lakes Pro Championships in the Chicago area at the Knollwood Club in Lake Forest, Ill. on clay (defeating Riggs in the final in five sets). Kovacs did not play in the northeastern portion of the tournament series, and in the final point standings, Kovacs finished third behind Riggs and Budge. Of the 31 tournaments, Riggs won 14, Kovacs won 7, Perry won 4, Budge won 3, and Van Horn won 2.

1947
Kovacs lost to Riggs in the U.S. Pro Indoor semifinal at Philadelphia on wood in March. In April, Kovacs began an 11-match two-man tour with Riggs, who organized the tour, the U.S. Professional Challenge Tour. Kovacs scored six match wins against Bobby Riggs' five to win the tour, the final and deciding match of best-of-five sets being postponed until early September with the series tied at five wins each.  In late April and May, Kovacs won three tournaments in New York State, at Buffalo (over Riggs in  the final), at Rochester (over Earn in the final) and at Troy on canvas (over Van Horn in the final). Riggs withdrew from the quarter-finals at Rochester and Troy due to a foot problem, but it was reported that in the doubles final at Troy, Riggs "ran like a scared rabbit despite reports of an injured foot". Kovacs lost to Riggs in the U.S. Pro at Forest Hills semifinal on grass in June. On September 2, Kovacs won the decider of the U.S. Professional Challenge Tour over Riggs in three straight sets using "a devastating series of well-placed backhand shots and cannonball serves." Kovacs and Riggs both won seven matches against each other on the year. 

1948
Kovacs won the North Florida Pro championships in St. Augustine in January beating Bill Lufler in the final. Kovacs won U.S. Professional Clay Court Championships at Miami in December (defeating Jimmy Evert in the final).  Kovacs said in a statement after the match he renounced the title for the following reasons: "First - the tournament was not sanctioned by the Professional Lawn Tennis Association. (PLTA). Second there was not a full representative field of ranking players competing for the title. As of Jan. 1, 1949. I will participate only in PLTA sanctioned tournaments." The PLTA ranked Kovacs joint third.

1949
In January Kovacs won the U. S. Pro Clay Court Championships in St. Augustine.  In the semis he beat Segura. "Kovacs had his serve working wonders and used his power". In the final he overcame Van Horn in five-sets.

1950
Kovacs won the U. S. Pro Clay Court Championships in March over Van Horn in the final, displaying an agile change of pace. In June, at the U.S. Pro Tennis Championships at the Cleveland Skating Rink on clay, Kovacs defeated Parker in the quarter-finals, losing only one game in a three-straight-set win. Parker was the reigning French champion on clay.  Kovacs then defeated Riggs in four sets to reach the final. In the final, at 4-4 in the fourth set, he developed leg cramps and retired, losing to Segura, who had defeated Kramer in the other semifinal. Kovacs won the Canadian Pro Championships at Quebec City on clay in September (over Van Horn in the final). Kovacs was third in the PLTA rankings.

1951
Kovacs won the U. S. Pro Clay Court Championships in March over Earn in the final. In June Kovacs and Parker would play against each other in the semi finals of the Canadian Professional Championships at Quebec City on clay, Kovacs winning in straight sets (Kovacs lost to Segura in four sets in the final). Kovacs' greatest pro tournament result was winning the International Pro Championships or US Pro Tennis Championships (according to the PTPA) held at Lakewood on cement just outside Cleveland in June 1951. He defeated Budge in a long semifinal and Pancho Segura in the final in five sets, saving five match points against him in the fifth set before winning. Kovacs was awarded the Benrus Cup, emblematic of the U.S. Pro Championships. A week later he withdrew from the Forest Hills version of the U.S. Pro Tennis Championships (organized by Riggs and Kramer) won by Segura. Kovacs was vice-president of the PTPA, which supported the rival Cleveland event, and Riggs and Kramer did not play at Cleveland that year. In early August 1951, shortly after beginning a tour with George Lyttleton Rogers and Frank Parker, Kovacs and Lyttleton Rogers disappeared and did not play scheduled fixtures, leaving Parker on his own. Kovacs and Lyttleton Rogers were longtime friends, and Rogers was married on September 2 in California. Kovacs was ranked the world No. 1 professional tennis player for 1951 by the PTPA (Professional Tennis Players Association), ahead of Segura, Gonzales, and Kramer, in that order. 

1952
In March 1952, at age 32, Kovacs defeated Pancho Gonzales in the Philadelphia Masters indoor on wood, despite losing the first eight games of the match. Kovacs lost all of his remaining matches (including his other match against Gonzales) in this round-robin event where four players played each other twice. This was Gonzales' only loss in the tournament, as he beat Kramer twice, beat Segura twice, and split the two matches with Kovacs. Kovacs was ranked the world No. 3 professional in the PTPA annual rankings for 1952 behind Segura and Gonzales. The USPLTA pro rankings for 1952 and  published in Lawn Tennis & Badminton placed Kovacs at No. 3 behind Segura and Gonzales.

1953
An injured Kovacs won the U. S. Pro Clay Court Champioinships in January at Hollywood Beach, Fla. over Riggs in the final in three straight sets. The 1953 win over Riggs marked Kovacs' seventh U.S. national singles title.

1954
Kovacs won the 1954 Florida Pro Championships at Fort Lauderdale on clay, defeating Riggs in the final. "Kovacs' power and accurate placements to the corners, plus a number of service aces, spelled the difference in the deciding set." Kovacs was ranked fifth by the International Professional Tennis Association.

1955
In March, 1955 Kovacs defeated Nick Carter in a pro exhibition match in San Francisco in straight sets. Immediately after this match, Kovacs played in the Cleveland World Pro or U.S. Pro played that year under the VASS scoring system. Kovacs defeated Riggs to reach the semifinal where he lost a very close match to Gonzales.  Two months later he played Pancho Gonzales in two matches using the VASS scoring system at the California Tennis Club in San Francisco and nearly beat him in both matches. Kovacs was ranked third in 1955 by the International Professional Tennis Association.

Later years
Kovacs continued to play in the Cleveland World Pro or U.S. Pro, the one major tournament which he had won. Ironically, the Sports Illustrated article of his 1957 appearance at Cleveland claimed that Kovacs "...has the finest collection of strokes in tennis but has never cashed in on this potential," despite the fact that Kovacs had previously won the event in 1951. Kovacs was ranked sixth for 1957 in the Jack March professional rankings, just ahead of Kramer at seventh. He spent his later years teaching tennis at the Davie Tennis Stadium in Piedmont, in Florida and at public courts near his home in Oakland.

Playing style and assessment
Kovacs won many clay events, including the Great Lakes Professional Clay Court Championships near Chicago and also five U. S. Professional Clay Court Championships. He reached two U.S. Pro finals at Cleveland, on clay in 1950 and on cement in 1951, winning the latter. Kovacs also reached the semifinals of the US Pro a further eight times. He lost five U.S. Pro semifinals at Forest Hills on grass. Kovacs did not play in the U.S. Clay Court Championships after 1938, or at Roland Garros or in Davis Cup, events where he would have been expected to achieve some success. Kovacs won a head-to-head series on an indoor surface against Riggs, with both players reportedly in excellent form throughout the matches. It was said of him that on the right days, when he was  "in the zone", he could be unbeatable. Fred Hawthorne, reporter for New York Herald-Tribune who watched nearly all the early matches of the 1941-1942 pro tour thought that Kovacs at his best reached "sheer brilliancy never before excelled", but at other times Frank played "surprisingly poor tennis." In his first pro match, on December 26, 1941 he defeated Don Budge, and won his first five matches against Budge on that tour.

Bowers evaluated Kovacs' playing style, "Kovacs was nearly two years younger than Riggs, of whom he was a direct opposite. Frank was rangy, about 6' 4", and served with lethal velocity. Riggs termed Frank's stroking "tremendously powerful" from both sides--often brilliant but sometimes erratic. Generally uninterested in coming to net, Frank preferred beating opponents from backcourt. Budge later said that the Kovacs backhand was the best he had ever seen. (Tilden wrote that it was second only to Budge's.)" Kovacs' net game improved during the 1940's, with a report from 1947 that "Kovacs had the losers shaking their heads by the sheer brilliance of his net game". In an assessment from July 1951, it was stated that "Kovacs, present world pro champ, gained his formidable spot through booming serves and a sound net game….", indicating that his net play had developed.

Tennis great Jack Kramer, Kovacs' near contemporary and rival, wrote: "Kovacs had picture strokes, maybe the best Backhand, but he could never win anything  because he didn't have any idea how to go about winning.  He never had a set plan for a match.  Hell, he never had a set plan for a shot.  He could sort of decide what to do with it halfway through the stroke." Kovacs' best shot, says Kramer, was "a hard, angled backhand crosscourt, but he could never figure out how to set it up so he could take advantage of it."  Riggs reportedly said to Kramer one day: "...don't worry about Frankie.... He looks great, but give him long enough and he'll find some way to keep you in the match, and give him a little longer and he'll find a way to beat himself." Nevertheless, Kovacs had many notable wins over Riggs, and a very positive win-loss record against Kramer. In the Philadelphia Inquirer in March 1950, it was said Kovacs led Kramer 16-0 in their head to heads as amateurs. TennisBase states Kramer led 4-0 in their meetings as pros,  all four matches played in the Philadelphia indoor tournament on wood.

Personal life
Kovacs was married to San Francisco vocal coach Judy Davis in 1950 and they lived for many years in their home in the Rockridge district of Oakland, until his death in 1990. His first marriage, on July 14, 1941, was to Virginia Wolfenden, also a tennis professional; they had a son, Frank Jr.

His cousin was the entertainer Ernie Kovacs.

Grand Slam finals

Singles (1 runner-up)

Pro Slam tournaments

Singles: 8 (4 titles, 4 runner-ups)

See also
 World number 1 ranked male tennis players
 Major professional tennis tournaments before the Open Era

References

Further reading
 Tom LeCompte, The Last Sure Thing contains a number of Kovacs stories

External links
 
 What Price Amateurs?

American male tennis players
American people of Hungarian descent
Sportspeople from Oakland, California
Tennis people from California
1919 births
1990 deaths
Professional tennis players before the Open Era
Date of death missing
United States Army personnel of World War II Take a Good Look is an American television game show created by and starring Ernie Kovacs, which aired from 1959 to 1961 on ABC's Thursday-night block at 10:30 PM Eastern Time.

Season 1 consisted of 39 episodes, from October 22, 1959, to July 21, 1960. Season 2 was far shorter, airing just 14 episodes between October 27, 1960, and February 9, 1961. Twenty episodes were repackaged for syndication in September 1978. In October 2017, all 49 surviving episodes were made available on a DVD set released by Shout Factory.

Background
First appearing on television in 1951, Kovacs was an extremely prolific producer of television comedy throughout the 1950s. As a result of the critical success of his 1957 NBC special Silent Show, Ernie came to Hollywood in 1958, where he had a film contract with Columbia Pictures to write and consult on screenplays – but no television series of his own. At that time, sponsors did not buy commercial time on a television shows as a commodity; rather, a sponsor would produce a television program in its entirety and present it to a network for broadcast. While visiting a Hollywood movie set, Kovacs happened to meet a cigar company executive who was impressed that Kovacs continually smoked a cigar. Ernie was impressed that this corporate executive was carrying a book on Bertold Brecht.

As a result of this chance meeting, a business deal ensued in which Consolidated Cigar/Dutch Masters became the sole sponsor of Ernie's newest idea for a television series. In the show itself, Ernie performed in many Dutch Masters commercials, usually presented as yet another type of "blackout gag" shown during the show and themselves unique due to being done completely in pantomime and directed by Kovacs himself. The Congress of TV Editorial Writers was impressed enough with the silent commercials to award Kovacs with their Madison Avenue Award in 1960.

Format

Take A Good Look was a parody of the Goodson-Todman panel game shows of the era, To Tell the Truth, I've Got a Secret, and What's My Line?. Kovacs, who appeared on What's My Line? ten times as a guest panelist (July–November 1957) and twice as the show's Mystery Guest (September 6, 1956 and September 7, 1957), produced and hosted a format similar to those shows: a panel of celebrities attempted to guess a secret about a seemingly ordinary person brought onstage.

In early episodes, the clues were presented by way of props and short video clips that had no cast, but eventually the show switched to using films of short comedy blackout gags starring Kovacs and a regular cast of Peggy Connelly, Jolene Brand, and Bobby Lauher. The clips pertained only vaguely to the person about whom guesses were being made. For example, for a woman whose secret was that she was a harness track jockey, Kovacs would show a short skit about two competing chariot racers trying to sabotage each other during a race. Another example was for a champion bubble blower, Kovacs showed a skit regarding a model train set for a movie scene; the sole hint was the sound a train makes, "choo-choo", and the extreme vagueness of this clue suggests that the skits were meant to be recycled.

Some of the people who were the focus of the guessing game were ordinary people who had experienced an extraordinary event, recently been in the news, or enjoyed a distinction of some kind. A panelist would be awarded one point if they guessed the person's identity/secret. At the end of the show, prizes would be awarded to the home viewer represented by the panelist with the most points.

Panelists
Appearing regularly throughout the run were Edie Adams, Cesar Romero, Hans Conried, and Ben Alexander. Carl Reiner only appeared regularly in Season 2.

Among the less frequent panelists of Season 1 were Zsa Zsa Gabor, Jane Wyatt, Mort Sahl, Jack Carson, Tony Randall, Janet Leigh, and Jim Backus. No infrequent panelists appeared in Season 2.

References

External links
 

1959 American television series debuts
1961 American television series endings
1950s American comedy game shows
1960s American comedy game shows
American Broadcasting Company original programming
Black-and-white American television shows